


Let Me Spell It Out For You

by heyjupiter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Warnings in author's note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 20:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18630835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/pseuds/heyjupiter
Summary: After leaving Vormir, Natasha is surprised to discover that she's become a ghost. Accompanied by her old cat, Liho, she watches over her family and learns that her sacrifice had been worthwhile. And when one of Lila Barton's friends pulls out a Ouija board at a sleepover, Nat gets a chance to communicate with the living again.





	Let Me Spell It Out For You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amy/gifts).



> Warning for major character death, but that's on Marvel. In an extremely out of character move for me, I did kill Liho, the cat Natasha had in the comics. But that's only so that Liho can live forever as a ghost cat, so really, Liho's fine.
> 
> Thanks to Amy for her helpful screaming ♥

Natasha had never given much thought to the afterlife; she'd preferred to focus on making amends in the life she had.

In her final moments, she'd been honored that Clint believed her life was worth saving twice over, but she knew she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she let Clint make the sacrifice. How could she look her niece and nephews in the eye after that? Impossible.

In the end, she believed herself to have cleared out the red in her ledger to the best of her capabilities. So she'd died at peace, which was more than she'd ever expected.

She's sure that the fall was enough to kill her, so she's surprised to regain consciousness back in the Avengers facility that had become home to her. But then, members of her team--her family--have made miraculous recoveries before, aided by incredible technological breakthroughs. They must have found a way to repair her broken body, the way they'd once repaired her broken mind.

But would they still have the Soul Stone if she was there? Was it possible to cheat the Stonekeeper that way? It must be, or she wouldn't be there.

But then Bruce says, "Clint. Where’s Nat?"

She waves and says, "I'm right here!"

But Clint just shakes his head minutely.

Nat reaches out her hand to touch Clint’s shoulders and finally realizes how different she feels, how light. She'd assumed she was on some kind of heavy painkillers but she seems, in fact, to be a ghost. 

"Well, shit," she says. No one reacts, not even a mock, " _Language_ " from Steve. Instead, she watches her teammates react to her death.

She'd thought perhaps they were immune to loss at this point; they'd suffered so much of it. Yet her teammates are apparently devastated by her loss. She watches as Bruce sinks to his very large knees, bent over and sobbing. She's glad to have had the chance to make her peace with Bruce, and for Bruce to have made his peace with Hulk. It had hurt him, when she'd forced his hand in Sokovia, but she'd known that what the team _needed_ mattered more than what Bruce _wanted_. She brushes her ghostly hand over Bruce's shoulder and turns to watch the rest. 

Rhodey cries, too, and Bruce eventually stands to pull him into a crushing hug. They stand together.

Tony is angry and scared. Tony had wanted so badly to protect everyone, to wrap the whole world up in armor for safekeeping. Tony, Nat knows, is taking her death as a personal failing on his part. 

Scott is perhaps fully feeling the weight of what they're up against.

Nebula and Rocket are harder for her to read.

Clint looks stoic, but Nat knows his tells. She hopes he'll forgive himself; hopes that her life was enough to buy back his family.

And so Clint is the one to get everyone back on track. "We'll mourn Nat later," he says. "We can't waste her sacrifice."

Truly, Nat had never considered that she would one day be mourned. She'd expected an unmarked grave, if any. She's not sure what to do now.

Then she feels something brush against her leg. She looks down and sees Liho, the stray cat who'd adopted her five years ago. After a fruitless day's work, Natasha had gone out on the patio for a breath of fresh air and a quiet place to cry, and a skinny black cat had headbutted her. Nat had petted the cat two and a half times before the cat faded back into the night. But eventually, the cat warmed up to Nat enough to sit on her lap. Nat's lap, and no one else's.

Eventually, Nat accepted that the cat was there to stay, and she named her Liho. Black cats were meant to be unlucky, and Liho was the embodiment of bad luck in Russian fairy tales. 

When she explained the name to Steve, he'd raised his eyebrows and said, "A bit on the nose, isn't it?"

"And Captain America and Black Widow aren't?"

He'd laughed and conceded the point, and they'd gone into town together to get pet supplies. The following week she'd taken Liho into the vet and learned that Liho had FIV, a virus commonly found in stray cats. The vet kindly explained that it was incurable and contagious to other cats, but that with proper care, Liho could live a comfortable life for years as long as she was kept as an indoor cat.

Nat had tried her best, but Liho was an escape artist who never really took to indoor life, unwilling to accept the life of a pampered lapcat the vet had prescribed for her. Liho had died two years after Nat found her, but her company had undeniably been a comfort for Nat during some of the worst of the post-Thanos moments.

And now she's here at Nat's side again. Nat bends down to scratch behind Liho's ears, and is surprised to find that unlike when she'd tried to touch Clint and Bruce, Liho feels warm and soft against her hand, just as she had in life. 

Liho gives her funny chirping meow and starts walking away from the team. Nat follows Liho into a kind of formless abyss.

Eventually, Nat comes to understand the boundaries of her afterlife. Time passes differently; she feels calm, peaceful, never bored. And whenever someone in the living world thinks of her, she can go to them. She can't be heard or felt, but with concentration she's been able to interact with the physical world in small ways, knocking over objects and creating tiny breezes. 

She remembers times over the last few years when she'd felt desperately alone, frantically trying to pry more data from a scan or crack an encoded message, only to be distracted by her coffee cup falling to the ground. She'd always attributed the phenomenon to a state of sleep-deprived clumsiness, but now she's pretty sure it had been Liho. "You're such a little pest," she whispers to Liho, who purrs in response.

Nat is surprised by how often she is thought of, by how often her spirit is allowed to cross back to the world of the living. Particularly after the huge, horrible final battle, the one that finally won the victory they'd been working toward for over five years. Once things are cleaned up, she's called to a memorial service in her honor. There's no body, but there's a plaque in a garden at the freshly-rebuilt Avengers facility. A surprising number of people turn out to remember Natasha, who'd spent so much of her life trying not to be seen. Apparently she'd failed at that mission, but she'd succeeded when it mattered most.

She's called through time, somehow, to watch over Steve Rogers in the past. She's overjoyed that he's found what he'd been looking for, all this time. Gamora thinks of her surprisingly often; Nat wishes she could have known her. She thinks they would have been friends. She visits Fury regularly; Liho and Goose get along like two peas in a very weird pod. She watches Sam take on the mantle of Cap with pride, and she sees Bucky enjoying the peace he'd so longed for.

Strangers think of her, too, those who heard the stories that trickled out about her. All around the world, families who were reunited thank her in their prayers and name their new babies after her.

But mostly, she spends a lot of time on the Barton farm. She finds it peaceful there, despite Liho's best attempts to terrorize the Bartons' dog. But as time goes on, she starts to worry about Clint. He's grieving, of course. That's to be expected. But he's moody, distracted. He seems to be thinking about Nat a _lot_ , given how often she's pulled to him. She wants him to live in the present, not dwell in the past.

Then one night, Lila has a sleepover. She watches Clint double-check that all his weapons have been properly locked away, and then as he puts frozen pizzas in the oven. She's not sure why he's thinking of her right now. But then the smoke alarm goes off and she remembers the time when they'd been undercover together on a long term mission, and he'd almost blown their cover by setting off a smoke alarm while making frozen pizza.

Clint swears, and Nat wonders how she'd forgotten. She wonders if her time as a ghost, or spirit, or whatever she is, has an expiration date. Perhaps she is losing herself. That thought compels her to redouble her efforts at communication. She concentrates very hard and manages to make the smoke swirl around her. She thinks she could spell out letters in the smoke, but there isn't very much of it, and Clint is already turning on the vent fan and opening a window to clear it out.

Laura comes in the kitchen and laughs. "I'll go into town and pick up some pizza from the gas station."

"Hon, you're gonna spoil the kids with all that fancy city pizza," Clint replies. Nat remembers how Clint's farm is outside a town so small that the only pizza place was also the gas station. Nat had preferred New York, but she understands and appreciates the trade-off Clint has made.

Laura takes the truck into town, and Nat follows Clint into the living room, where Lila and her friends are watching a scary movie.

One of Lila's friends says, "Hey, I brought a Ouija board, you guys want to try it out?"

They agree, though Lila hangs back. Lila calls to Nat's spirit often. Nat's glad for the chance to see her niece grow up, glad for how kind and strong she is in spite of her grief. 

The girls put their fingers on the planchette, and solemnly ask, "Are there any spirits here tonight?"

Nat moves the planchette to YES.

The girls erupt into giggles and whispers, punctuated with accusations of the others moving it.

One of the girls asks, "What's your name?"

Nat spells out N-A-T-A-S-H-A.

"That isn't funny!" Lila says. "I'm serious, guys, stop it."

"It wasn't me!" 

"I swear, I wouldn't."

"No way." 

Lila studies her friends uncertainly and says, "Whatever, this is fake anyway."

She takes her hands off the planchette, and her friends follow suit. One of them says,"Sorry, Lila, that was weird. Let's just watch the movie."

But Nat moves the planchette again, and the girls all freeze and watch it, their hands all folded across their laps. 

L-I-L-A-C-H-K-A I L-O-V-E Y-O-U. 

"Oh my god," Lila mutters. "Auntie Nat? Is it really...is it really….?"

Nat points to YES.

"Oh my god. _Dad!_ "

Clint comes running into the room. "Lila? What's wrong?"

"Sorry, everything's okay, it's just--"

"Oh, Lila, are you guys playing with that Ouija board? You know that stuff's fake."

"Dad, watch," Lila insists. Nat is proud of her persistence. 

Nat wishes the Ouija board had Cyrillic letters, but she transliterates as best she can to write, H-I P-T-I-C-H-K-A. "пташка." "Little birdie," she'd called him. He'd rolled his eyes at first, but never minded it. 

Clint picks up the Ouija board and flips it over, scanning for magnets or any kind of deceit. Nat understands, because this is what Nat would have done.

"We didn't do anything to it, I swear," Lila's friend says. "We--we would never."

"Thanks, Sofia," Clint says. "I…" He trails off, and his eyes fill with tears.

"Um, hey, I think I left something up in Lila's room," one of the other girls says. 

"Oh yeah, me too," the other two agree immediately.

"So...we'll just go get those things we forgot, and be back down in a few minutes," Sofia says.

The girls clear out of the living room, and Clint sets the Ouija board back down on the coffee table. "Nat? It's really you?" he asks, his voice choked up.

She moves the planchette back to YES.

"Where are you? Are you okay? Nat, I'm so so sorry, I didn't want for you to…"

Y-O-U-R-E W-E-L-C-O-M-E.

He laughs. 

She continues, M-Y C-H-O-I-C-E. 

"I hope you didn't still think you had red in your ledger, Nat. I hope you know that you never owed me anything."

Y-O-U D-O-N-T E-I-T-H-E-R.

"Nat, you...you gave up everything for me."

F-O-R Y-O-U-R F-A-M-I-L-Y. F-O-R M-Y F-A-M-I-L-Y.

Lila's crying now too, and Clint puts an arm around her.

I-T W-A-S W-O-R-T-H I-T. Nat's starting to tire from the effort of moving the planchette. She'd never understood how a Ouija board was supposed to work, but she's starting to think it might actually be easier if Clint and Lila would put their hands back on it. 

Then Laura comes in with the pizzas. "Mom! Auntie Nat is here! In the Ouija board!" Lila blurts.

Laura looks to Clint, who shrugs and says, "Stranger things have happened, right? Look, she called me a nickname no one else knew...it’s her, Laur. I don’t know how, but it’s her."

Laura walks up to the board, looks around, and says, "Nat, I hope you know that every day we are so thankful for what you did, and we miss you so much."

I K-N-O-W.

Laura gasps and leans against Clint. 

Nat's never felt so tired in her spirit form. Liho weaves around her legs. She points the planchette to GOODBYE.

"Wait! Auntie Nat, are you...can you come back another time maybe?"

Nat thinks about it. She's pretty sure she could. She wonders if it would be easier for them to move on if she said NO, if she makes this a last effort to contact them before she moves on to whatever is next for her. But...Nat enjoyed being able to talk to them. She'd like to be able to visit them again. She's sacrificed enough, she thinks, and so with effort, she moves the planchette to YES. 

Before she fades out fully, she hears Laura call, "Girls! Pizza's here! Come get it before the dog does!" followed by a small stampede down the stairs.

Life goes on in the Barton house, as Nat follows Liho back into the abyss to rest, feeling suffused with love as she goes.


End file.
